CityView Magazine

Y on second thought My meatballs were as hard as rocks and would probably have been more useful as cannon fodder than as food. s the holiday season ap- proaches and we all gather with family and friends to celebrate, I oſten pause to remember some of my fondest dining experiences. Aſter all, what greater bond exists between people than the fellowship of sharing food and drink? With this sentiment in mind, I would like to share some of my favorite moments in fine dining: One of my earliest memories of un- Great Moments in Dining A was hurled violently onto the ceiling, where it attached itself as if held in place by superglue. I remember vividly all of us staring upwards at what had once promised to be our dinner. Our shock was soon replaced by nervous laughter as we realized how narrowly we had avoided injury. While I don't remember what we had to eat that day instead of cabbage, I do remember that it took a long time to clean the ceiling. Aſter my close brush with death by forgettable dining includes cabbage, a pressure cooker, and a kitchen ceiling. These may sound like unlikely ingre- dients, but bear with me. When I was growing up in the Dark Ages, micro- waves had not yet been invented. My mother, like millions of others, oſten used her pressure cooker to prepare meals quickly. As anyone familiar with a pressure cooker knows, it is ESSEN- TIAL for the cooker to rest long enough to allow the pressure inside to dissi- pate; otherwise, awful, even dangerous, things happen. My poor mother, surrounded by five starving and impatient children, did not wait quite long enough before re- moving the lid. The cabbage in the pot exploded in a cloud of green matter that 12 | Food & Wine • 2011 exploding cabbage, I stayed out of the kitchen for a while. But in 1978 I mar- ried a man whose mother was a fabu- lous cook, and I wanted her to teach me how to make spaghetti and meatballs. If Giada de Laurentis and Rod Serling had teamed up to write a script for Italian cooking gone wrong, they would have created my next unforgettable dining experience, something I refer to as "My Meatball Nightmare." When I prepared my first batch of meatballs and sauce, I leſt out an im- portant step in the recipe: I forgot to add cold water to the mixture to soſten the meatballs, an omission I discovered only aſter we sat down to eat. My meat- balls did not in any way resemble my mother-in-law's. They did not float in- vitingly in a bowl of rich, red sauce. In- stead, they sat on top of a watery, bright orange liquid that looked more like melted clown make-up than spaghetti sauce. They also didn't taste like hers. Her meatballs were moist and tender; mine were as hard as rocks and would probably have been more useful as can- non fodder than as food. My husband, bless his heart, smiled and ate everything on his plate. He never once criticized my cooking or compared me to his mother (at least not out loud). I'm sure he harbored a se- cret hope that I would one day become a good cook, and I have — my family loves my spaghetti and meatballs. Not long aſter my meatball misad- venture, I had yet another unforget- table dining experience, this time in a restaurant. My husband and I met my best friend from high school and her husband for dinner at a steakhouse. She was a nice girl, but she was married to an insufferable know-it-all (they have since divorced). The restaurant was passable, nothing sophisticated, and their wine list was exactly the kind you would ex- pect in a place like that. Mr. Know-it-all, condescendingly reading the wine list, ordered a $3 bottle of Chianti, which, B M A R Y Z A H R A N

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